


A Controversial Case of (Allegedly) Satanic Murders

by genericghouligan



Series: Demon Shane [4]
Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, Anthropology, Buzzfeed Unsolved True Crime, Canon-Typical Violence, Demon Shane Madej, F/M, Gen, Minor Original Character(s), Murder, Past Relationship(s), Witch Hunts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 19:01:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16582235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genericghouligan/pseuds/genericghouligan
Summary: Ryan covers a case that hits close to home.





	1. RYAN

**Author's Note:**

> ETA 11/17: Tense shifting in chapter one fixed; glossary of Polish-Lithuanian historical terms added in chapter two. 
> 
> I said before I prefer to use actual folklore and stories. As such, this is an actual case that many may find deeply upsetting. I myself hate this case for some of the reasons explored in this fic, and more. If you are sensitive to such things please take caution reading this. More specific notes at the bottom contain "spoilers". 
> 
> That being said. Let's get into it.

"Shh," Ryan says to Devon, as Shane approaches.

"Are you seriously still keeping the case a secret from me? We're filming in twenty minutes!"

"I'd tell you, but," Ryan nods to the research intern, who glances up at him over her the rim of her glasses. She's been growing more nervous about the whole thing and had been reading the same article for Ruining History since they started setting up in HQ.

"Why did you hire a stupidly over qualified research intern if you're going to keep it a secret from her?"

"Again, not the one who accosted her at a Starbucks, stole a draft of her paper, and dragged her to orientation."

Shane had been sitting at his desk, glasses on his head while he rubbed at his eyes, and hes startles when Ryan asks what he's working on.

"Oh, I'm just reading this..." He waves the paper around. There are margin scribbles in Shane's handwriting, but -

"Whose handwriting is that?" It isn't Sara's, too slanted and messy, barely recognizable as English.

Shane looks back down at it, frowns, and then put his glasses on. Flips back to the first page. "Um. Adela Duvaney."

Ryan follows his gaze. The name is typed in the upper corner.

"You're reading a... Paper?"

"Met a grad student when I was getting the coffees this morning, because you're too picky for Buzzfeed's selection -"

"We were out of peppermint creamer," Ryan says. "Devon insisted."

"Sure."

"You went to get coffee and got a paper?"

"It's about folklore," he says.

The title of the paper is _???? TITLE ????_ , and the first paragraph seems to be establishing something about the English Renaissance.

"And you're..."

"I offered to give a read for, like, legibility, coherence, that stuff. She was strung out on espresso. It's interesting. She said I could crib from it for Ruining History if I wanted. The bibliography is pretty robust."

"All right, man."

And that should've been that, except they're getting coffee - in the building this time - a few days later and one of the hiring managers pops by to tell Shane, "Hey, that resume you said to keep an eye out for? It came in. Looks solid."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Just..." She makes a face Ryan can't quite read.

"What?"

"She seems sincere, but why is she applying for Buzzfeed Blue? She's in a PhD program for anthropology and she has zero interest in video production."

"Ah. Well, with the launch of BUN," Shane says, and gives a surprisingly heartfelt speech about wanting to have more historically accurate information for Ruining History's long awaited return, and getting more "facts" into Ryan's "ghost nonsense", and Ryan waits patiently because he still has the upperhand here because,

"You stole a paper from a college kid, sent it back with corrections, and told HR to hire her?"

"You - don't put it like that," Shane protests.

"I'm just saying, that's weird, and also, mixed signals, I think. Do you hate her or want her hired here?"

"Why would those be mutually exclusive?"

So El had joined the team.

"So, Shane accosted you in Starbucks, huh?"

El adjusts her glasses. "Um. Not accosted. I think - I was complaining to a friend about some trouble I was having with my paper, and Shane overheard, and my friend started talking to him because I made her watch the show. And he asked me about my, um, my paper, and everything, and then he offered to look over my draft."

"On one condition," says Shane, still looming behind her on her introductory tour.

"I'm supposed to ask you what I asked him," she says, "which was. Um. Mr. Madej - uh, Shane. I really don't want to get fired."

Shane's eyes dance with mirth. "He won't fire you. TJ likes you. Go on, ask him!"

She squares her shoulders. "You say you want to investigate the question of whether or not ghosts are real but you haven't given any working definition of what a ghost is and how can you attempt to find a ghost if you haven't clearly defined parameters for the question?"

"She asked me the same thing," Shane says gleefully. "Science!"

"You're one bloody lab coat away from being a mad scientist," Ryan tells him. And then, "Ghosts are - well, there's a wide spectrum of different... Phenomena, and of course different cultures have different perspectives on - I mean you don't know what they are, that's kind of part of the -" he frowns. "Well, they're spirits of the dead."

"But what about demons? In many traditions, demons are also the spirits of the dead. Or do you agree with Father Thomas and the Catholic perspective of demons? In which case, why not the Catholic perspective of ghosts?"

"Well, I went to Father Thomas for his experience with demons, I'm not saying any one group has the answer."

"Would you ever want to explore other perspectives on demons in the show?"

"Uh. Yeah, absolutely."

Ryan looks up at Shane, who claps his hands. "Finally some new lore in our canon!"

"I hate you," Ryan says, automatically. But if anything can help him wrap his head around the cognitive dissonance of Shane Madej, demon, and the belief that demons are evil because of every other demon he's ever heard about, it's probably learning more about demons. "Adela -"

"El," she says quickly.

"El. You're new here, but at Buzzfeed, and especially in the Unsolved Network, it's common knowledge that Shane here is what we call a problem employee -"

Shane laughs.

" - and you should be careful about hanging around him too much. He's a terrible influence."

El looks between them and then nods, solemn.

And throughout the season of Supernatural she keeps pulling up new, old texts for him, and doesn't seem to find it the least bit odd that he wants information on whether some demons are good guys, because she seems to classify this as an academic interest.

And Ryan looks at Shane sidelong in a house and points his flashlight at the corner of a dusty room where a portal to Hell was said to have been opened by cultists and says, "So... Normally my rule is not to fuck with demons..."

Frankly, it's chilling his blood to even think what he's about to say, but... "But one of our research interns was telling me about how the word demon comes from the Greek _daimones_ , and I guess - maybe there's some different types of demons, some evil, some... less evil, maybe even some good demons?"

Shane looks at the camera, eyes wide, really playing up the shock at Ryan's new approach here, or maybe worrying about how the audience is going to take this considering a lot of them seem uncomfortably close to the truth even when they claim to be joking about it.

Ryan presses on: "I don't want to be an asshole so. I don't know, this place is creepy as hell, oh my god. But if there are some chill demons here and you maybe wanna... talk to us? Mess with our equipment? Rip Shane's throat out?" He adds, just to get Shane back into the damn episode.

It works. "Wh--if it's a chill demon, why would it want to--that's not how lists work, Ryan! Those are the options? Kill me, turn off your flashlight, or make some crackling noises on your stupid EVP recorder?"

Ryan wheezes.

"I don't understand how that would be a chill demon, Ryan!"

There's few things funnier than the way Shane inflects his name, almost whiny, when Ryan threatens to kill him. Especially considering Ryan has no idea how to kill him.

All in all it's cinematic gold, Shane's wide-eyed response playing out pitch perfect while fans chatter excitedly in the comments about how brave Ryan is being these days.

And they cut away to them in the studio later arguing -

"Why would you be so freaked out if demons aren't real?" Ryan challenged, which makes Shane sputter, and he strokes his chin while Shane flounders and looks at the camera. "We got him, Boogaras," he winks.

"You didn't GET me, I wasn't scared, I was just trying to come to terms with my cohost thinking that murdering me qualified as _chill_! Now every time you describe someone you're introducing me to as chill I'm gonna be like, oh, is this the kind of chill that includes killing me?"

"We got him, guys. Rough - rough for the Shaniacs."

Shane sighs. "Just... play the stupid EVP you got."

"He even wants to hear EVP's now," Ryan says.

The episode cut out Shane pantomiming strangling Ryan and the ensuing shoving match scuffle in the sound booth and TJ interrupting with, "Really, gentlemen?"

Instead they show a replay of Shane saying, "Make some stupid crackling noise on your EVP recorder?" And a distinct crackling noise.

The episode picks back up with Shane saying, "Also, if we're citing our researcher, I will remind you - "

And Ryan sighs, "Don't start on the Satanist thing again."

" - evil Satanist cults have never actually been a thing."

"You don't know that! They might not broadcast it!"

"There's no evidence."

"You - do you not remember the Jamison case?"

"I remember being thoroughly underwhelmed by one weird book and an anonymous tip."

It's a good episode, but El watches the episode in HQ and they both look at her expectantly when she pauses it, and she says, "I spent two weeks in Appalachia writing a paper about the West Memphis Three and witch hunts," she said. "I'm not even talking to Ryan about cults until he finishes all three Paradise Lost documentaries on HBO."

"Hey!"

"Put it on True Crime, cause they sure as hell never found the real killers," she mutters.

And the thing is, Ryan actually does pull up the documentary one night when he's run out of energy to start new TV shows he'd said he was gonna give a shot, and by the end of the first one he's furiously taking notes and googling on his phone and he has no choice but to play the next one, and then it's already 3am and he might as well watch the third and just not sleep.

He comes into work the next day and Zack immediately tells him he looks terrible and El is offsite that day scouting with Devon so he corners TJ and says, "I have an idea for a True Crime episode and I want to keep it ultra secret."

"All right," says TJ.

"El can't know."

"Your research intern can't know?"

"It's that case she's always talking about."

"The Satanist one?"

"Yes. It's crazy, TJ. It's like Keddie Cabin meets Salem witch hunts meets - uh, Casey Anthony."

"Sounds on brand," he says. "But if you have an expert on the case on hand, why can't she know?"

"Because I'm going to surprise her."

"And Shane?"

"Can't keep a secret," Ryan says. But honestly, he's more worried about how Shane will react to a Satanist case.

He'd been visibly unimpressed with Father Thomas, almost indulgent. The way women sometimes acted when a man was saying, with utmost confidence, something very stupid about something she knew much, much more about. He'd also been pretty dismissive about the Sallie House Satanists, between the pieces that aired.

"I'm pretty sure it's illegal to have someone evicted for practicing Satanism," he says.

Ryan wants to hit him, because there's another ghost hunter there and he's way more experienced than them and he would like to avoid being shunned by other investigators for being too flippant, or seeming like they're the kind of assholes who come as purported ghost hunters but are actually are there as debunkers. Instead he says, "Not if your painting things on the floor!"

"Looks more like a stain and they lied about Satanist tenants to avoid disclosing some past plumbing issue," Shane dismisses. "A real pentagram is a circle, not an oval. It's about balance, and circles have infinite lines of symmetry."

"What?" the other investigator asks.

"It's math," says Shane. And then, "I Googled some ghoul stuff at the airport while this one was drooling all over his neck pillow. Pentagrams are a symbol of balance."

"I apologize for him," Ryan says.

The guy waves him off. "Nah, I've met plenty of skeptics. You seriously want to lay down on that thing?"

Shane just grins, manic and wild.

And in New Orleans, when Ryan has already worked out that he's a demon, it's more interesting to see him interact with an expert.

If Mary knows what Shane is, she doesn't give anything away. Shane professes to like her, but he also says he likes her house and it's that eyewatering pink and really, who's to know what the hell is going on in Shane's head.

The episode comes out unusually emotionally intense, with the little confessional Shane gives the camera while Ryan is channeling.

He wonders how much demons can feel at all, and if Shane is trying to feel more.

As for voodoo itself, Shane seems to find it interesting, but he also mumbles something about initiations and capitalism that makes him wonder if he appreciates the façade, the glaring colors and strangeness, rather than any sort of substance.

And while filming the Jamison episode, Shane turns to Ryan and says, "What the fuck is a Satanic Bible?"

And Ryan laughs so hard he hurts his ribs.

But also:

"You're a perfect angel," says Curly, and Shane's face twitches.

The social media interns post more demon Shane fan art and he just sighs and says, "Really?"

"Speak of the devil," TJ says, gesturing to Shane as he walks in, and probably no one else even sees the annoyance on his face but Ryan does.

"You're a godsend," Daysha says, when Shane delivers her food from Tasty, and Shane says, "Not really."

And, "For the last time, Ryan," says Shane, "there's no such thing as demons."

Ryan raises his eyebrows at that giant steaming pile of bullcrap and Shane meets the expression with a challenge in his eyes and Ryan doesn't say, looked in the mirror lately?

They don't talk about it.

And they especially don't talk about it in this context, where Shane usually sets aside his skeptic act to be a huge dork about his supposed detective brain, and Ryan gets to be the critical one as he builds up and tears apart theories in turn.

"Not the season for it," Shane chastises, when he brings up ghost evidence during True Crime.

But the reason he needs to do this case is the same reason he needed to say, in that terrifying demon house, that he's done research into demons and found that maybe they're not all evil. Or at least not so black and white as all that. Well, the reason for that was twofold: reassuring Shane that he wasn't an anti-demon bigot without violating their silent agreement not to discuss what Shane was, and also this.

"It's important," he tells El. "I'm the first to say that you should be concerned about demons, but... This isn't demons. And there's a difference between fear and hysteria. This fed on hysteria."

And Ryan, personally, is sick to death of hysteria driving violence and injustice.

He turns to Shane and sees something dark in his expression. Something he doesn't like. Something inhuman. For the first time, including the time Shane combed over hours of uncut VO to add Ryan's voice to his stupid animation, Ryan looks at Shane and sees the diabolical.


	2. SHANE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for historical antisemitism which is quickly addressed by Shane.

"Hello, and welcome to another episode of Buzzfeed Unsolved True Crime. This week we're covering the officially solved but widely controversial case of the West Memphis Three."

Shane turns to look at Ryan.

He doesn't remember this case, but he's heard El talk about it. She'd called it the Salem of the twentieth century, and from what he's gathered, it's gonna be ugly.

"This was Ryan's top secret project. Our intern actually has an article published about this case from a sociological perspective, and he didn't trust me to keep it a secret from her. Let's add the link to her article in the description, can we? Is that possible?"

TJ gives him a thumbs up.

"So I actually don't know much about this one at all. Except that it may or may not involve demons?" He lilts the last two syllables. Dee-mons?

"Not demons," Ryan says. "Just a lot of frightened people."

"Well then!"

"Let's get into it."

* * *

 

_In 1993 the bodies of three young boys were recovered from a creek in West Memphis Tennessee._

**So they're the three?**

_What? No._

**No?**

_No!_

**Well, where do the three come in?**

_You'll see._

**Okay...**

_The children, Steve Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers, were last seen playing together at 6:30pm on May 5, 1993. John Mark Byers, the adoptive father of Christopher Byers, called the police at 7 o'clock that night._

**Wait. That soon? Thirty minutes?**

_Yeah. Well, they were seen by neighbors, not... Not by him, maybe? But within thirty minutes of them last being seen alive, someone called the police._

**And they were already dead?**

_[sigh] I don't know._

**You don't know?**

_There was never a time of death released. Or confirmed, according to one letter sent by an investigator to the forensics lab._

**How - you said this was 1993? How did they not know?**

_You're not going to like this case._

**I already hate it.**

_Searches began that night but were limited, but parts of the search done by friends and family came very close to the place where the bodies would later be found. The next morning a more thorough search was done, starting at 8am, of the entire area where the boys were last scene. They found nothing. Then, at 1:45 that afternoon, Officer Steve Jones found a child's shoe in a creek. The bodies were discovered in gruesome fashion._

* * *

 

"It's the damned Cossacks' fault," said Mikołoiunos.

"Like hell," said Szymkunas. "If the szlachta weren't power hungry cowards -"

Shane, at this time going by Jonas Žemnya, generally just Žemnya or, hey, you!, approaches them as casually as he can. "And what are we blaming our friends in the szlachta for today, gentlemen?" He's careful to use a variant of the word friend that more accurately means "person we hate", in the colloquial and the intonation.

"These trials," says Szymkunas. "Have you seen them?"

"Trials?" Shane says.

Last month he'd helped Kaska and her husband find work in another household to the south, where both sons of the elderly lord owed him, albeit for very different reasons. But he was running out of places to send people who saw the accusations coming, and too often they didn't know they would be accused before the magistrate's men came for them, or didn't know to come to him for help, despite his attempts to make it known.

The last time he'd visited France, he'd been told that hardly anyone believed in witches anymore. And yet here he was.

"They accused Fedia of it now," saus Mikołoiunos. "Everyone knows she didn't do what they say she did - put a hex on the lord's wife, and for what reason? She doesn't know the woman! But her husband is too uppity for a chałupnik. He has grand ideas that Cossacks had the right thinking."

"Uppity," breathes Szymkunas, with an eye roll. "Bold words for a kormonik who has so many ideas about the arendators."

"That's the one thing the Cossacks got right, in my opinion."

"If I hear you say that again I will make sure no man in a hundred çaqrım will serve you Medovukha," Shane tells him. Then: "Fedia, you said? Fedia Voĭtekhovaia?"

Both men blink at his sudden shift.

"What care is it of yours?" Mikołoiunos asks.

"Voitekh, I've met Voitekh. If you see him, send him here. And a refill for you both," he adds, filling their cups.

Szymkunas catches him later, when he's trying to get the last dregs of Medovukha out of a barrel. "You want to see Voitekh?"

Shane sizes him up. The man is a little extreme, when he gets to drinking. Shane likes the extreme. He thinks it will serve humans well if they do have these extreme ideas, about the szlachta, about royalists, about the Habsburgs. "I think I can find him a job out of town. If he goes now, I can get Fedia out, and hide her until it's safe for her to join him."

"You would do that? Why?"

It's been nearly six decades. He can no longer pretend that things he witnesses are things his old friend might have lived to see, if he hadn't been killed for believing the wrong things.

But he still says, "I saw someone burned, once. Didn't sit well with me."

"I'll bring Voitekh," says Szymkunas.

* * *

 

"Shane?" Ryan says.

Shane blinks. Ryan finished an entire section on the different pieces of evidence collected by investigators without Shane making a single interjection, and now he's looking at Shane with clear concern.

"Sorry," is all he can offer. "Not much I can riff on. Dead kids."

Ryan pulls a sympathetic face. "It's the worst. You need a minute?"

"No. Let's move on to whatever horrifying shit you're about to tell me."

"There's a lot of it."

This will all get cut, of course, so Ryan says, "And with that being said, let's get into the theories."

"Is this where the Three come in?"

"Shut up, Shane."

* * *

 

_The first theory is actually the official legal culmination of the case. If you remember I said at the beginning it was already solved. In 1994, Misskelley was convicted in his own trial, and then Baldwin and Echols were tried together._

**That's the three?**

_Yeah, they got named that in the ensuing circus. A lot of people saw the documentary and didn't like what had happened. But... This is the official story, and at least one of the victims' families still believe they're the killers, so I'll present the evidence._

**Let's hear it.**

_I said before that Misskelley confessed and then recanted the confession in order to plead not guilty. Based on his confession and the lack of alibi, that case was pretty much a slam dunk._

**Well, yeah. He confessed. What makes people say...**

_Well, for starters, he was interviewed for hours and hours, without a parent present, and his IQ was... 75? 72? Borderline. He was a minor._

**Not good.**

_No. Not good. And in the actual confession - I'll play a clip for you._

**... [sigh] That's the shadiest - Ryan, you've given me Underwater Area 51 on this show, and missing blood samples, and the - the Keddie Cabin murders with the weird sheriff, and this is still honestly the shadiest... This is like that guy that confessed in the Torso Murders, but we have recorded proof of it. He doesn't know anything about the crime he says he committed.**

_I know! I know._

**They corrected him!**

_It's terrible. Not. Not great evidence. But the families -_

**I get it! I get not wanting to think about their son's murder beyond the guy who confessed to it... You said multiple times?**

Several times, yeah. Always different stories.

**I can see how that's... I get that. You hear a guy confess to any murder and you wanna think, case closed! Especially when it's your kid's death he's describing. But this guy... You said he's borderline, with the IQ, and the human mind is weird, he could - he could be confused himself. About whether he did it. Like that experiment with hot air balloon rides.**

_Oh, where they photoshopped people -_

**Yeah.**

_Yeah, I can see that. But that's just Misskelley. They couldn't use his confession or the accusations he made about Echols and Baldwin's involvement in their trial because of some legal thing, so they had to build a separate case._

**All right. Let's hear that.**

_So... Murder weapon. I told you they never found the murder weapon for sure, but they found a bunch of knives. The evidence list just has a whole ton of knives, but there are two important ones. One of them, they found in a lake. The lake knife, a lot of people said Damien Echols had a similar one. Even he said so. But he said his was camouflage, and this one was black._

**Okay. But it was the murder weapon?**

_Maybe. There was no evidence found on it, because it was in the lake, and no one had actually seen Echols or Baldwin dump it in the lake. And the forensic expert actually admitted just about any knife could make the lacerations on the bodies, but the guy - this one guy, during the trial, he uses the knife to cut a grapefruit to show the similarities between the cuts._

**He... [wheeze] What? A grapefruit?**

_A grapefruit._

**Did he just panic and decide to use part of his lunch? Oh, see, this, uh, peanut butter sandwich -**

_If you cut it with a knife, it kind of looks like a knife cut into it!_

**What the - what is wrong with this jury. Is this all the evidence?**

_Oh, there's more._

**I don't like how you said that.**

_They found a bloody locket that was worn by Echols and Baldwin -_

**At the same time?**

_What. No. I don't know, they just - shut up, Shane. The blood matched both Baldwin and one of the victims._

**Okay, that's pretty damning.**

_Except they had to use a more unreliable DNA test. And it's possible that someone related to the victim, or just another person with those markers, or any number of contaminations between samples, could've gotten it wrong. Especially because... A lot of stuff done with the same DNA test, it's listed as belonging to maybe one of the victims... Or the the guy who owned the shirt._

**That's - that's way too unreliable. What, were they bloodtyping them?**

_Basically._

**Okay. Possible DNA evidence.**

_And when the retested it years later it didn't link them to the scene or the victims at all._

**So no DNA evidence?**

_They didn't know that at the time. Um, the alibis are kind of shaky -_

**No one knows where I was last Thursday.**

_... Okay?_

**I mean. If someone arrested me and said, prove you didn't kill someone last Thursday, it was me and the cat. Maybe a camera can confirm I didn't leave my apartment, and I did tweet a couple times, but Sara is out of town so - I have no alibi.**

_Did you commit a murder last Thursday?_

**What? I'm making a point! I didn't kill anyone.**

_Okay, Shane. Whatever you say._

* * *

 

Voitekh takes the job Shane found him, but as soon as he breaks Fedia out she grabs his arms and makes him promise not to send her off to Voitekh. Apparently he'd been having an affair with the noblewoman who'd accused his wife of love spells, saying she wanted the lord's affections and was trying to ruin their marriage.

Shane doesn't like any of that, so he agrees, even though this will mean hiding a fugitive for a lot longer than he expected.

Before the illusion the guards are seeing wears off, he brings her into the tavern and introduces her to everyone as Teodora, the widow of an old friend, who needs work.

She's been working two days before the magistrate finds the supposed witch has vanished into thin air. And when the magistrate's men come stomping into the tavern, there are a lot of witnesses who say she's been there longer than Fedia has been missing. In fact, Ishak, one of the adenrators, scoffs at the suggestion that Teodora is Fedia.

"Fedia had a much wider face. And long, like a horse."

Teodora looks at Shane. "I didn't meet this Fedia," she says, "but perhaps, if she is gone, she is dead."

"Right," one of the men says slowly. "She must be."

"I saw you outside digging," Shane says. "Last night. You must have buried her. No Christian burial for a witch, after all. Fedia Voĭtekhovaia is dead. This is Teodora, widow of Gregorius."

"How did Gregorius die?" One of the stronger-willed ones asks suspiciously.

Shane smiles. "A woodcutting accident."

"It was very tragic," says Teodora. "My sister in law could not bear to look at me, her brother's heart, and asked her husband to send me away to Gregorius's good friend Jonas."

"And here she is!" Shane says.

Later, they are doubled over laughing, and Teodora says, "I did not know you had such a gift for persuasion, Jonas."

"Žemnya," he corrects. "Jonas is... I grow tired of it."

"Too common," she agrees. "I think sometimes if you hear a word often enough it ceases to have any meaning at all. Žemnya has meaning."

"It does," he says, thinking of the priestess who'd called him it - or near enough - in the first place, hundreds of years earlier.

Semantic satiation, it's called. And if he finds himself looking at her and thinking, off-limits, off-limits, over and over til it ceases to have meaning, then that is his problem.

* * *

 

_And finally, the prosecution called Dr. Dale Griffis, who testified that the black clothing worn by Echols, his interest in Wicca and other religions, the name Aleister Crowley written in his notebook, and his preference for rock music were all indicative of Echols being a Satanist._

**Ryan.**

_I know._

**Ryan.**

_What?_

**This is the dumbest...**

_I know!_

**And they convicted them?**

_They served 18 years and were released after multiple appeals under the conditions that they enter a special plea called an Alfred Plea. Where they stay technically guilty while continuing to maintain their innocence._

**That's a thing?**

_It is, and it sounds like a massive cop-out. A way to cover your ass when you've got the wrong guys but they might sue if you admit that._

**[sigh] What are the other theories?**

_You're not buying this one?_

**There's nothing to buy. You have given me a giant box of nothing and I'm not gonna pay a penny for it.**

_[wheeze]_

**Fibers they can't definitively match, bad DNA, hair that looks like theirs but isn't theirs according to better DNA tests, and a bunch of contradictory testimony from freaked out townspeople and ex girlfriends.**

_Don't forget the knives._

**The knives they can't link to the crime?**

_Those knives._

**I hate this.**

_The next suspect is the stepfather of one of the boys -_

* * *

 

El watches the video in post, and her eyes go wide when Ryan announces the case but she doesn't react beyond stunned until Ryan mentions that her article is linked in the description, and then she hits pause.

"What!"

"We wanted to cite an expert."

"Holy shit."

She unpauses it almost immediately, like she can't wait to see the rest.

"Did we do it justice?" Shane asks, when the video finally wraps up. The word is bitter on his tongue. Justice.

El considers this. "Not bad for a twenty minute treatment on the subject of five films and several books." She looks up. "It's pretty dark. Darker than your usual."

"It's important," Ryan says. "I'm the first to say that you should be concerned about demons, but... This isn't demons. And there's a difference between fear and hysteria. This fed on hysteria."

"It was less damaging to the social fabric of West Memphis to have Satanists lurking around every corner than to have child-killers brushing shoulders with them in church and at the supermarket," she says. "So they ruined lives, and let someone - multiple someones, I imagine - get away with murder."

"Echols seems to be doing okay."

"Exploiting one's own trauma for personal gain is common," she says, "but rarely indicates that one is okay. Thank you, Ryan. Shane."

"Of course," Ryan says. He looks a little confused as she walks away. "I thought she'd be more excited."

"It's a triple murder, Ryan."

Ryan recoils a little. "I didn't say she'd be dancing on their graves, but she's passionate about this case, about the injustice of it -"

"Injustice is right." Then, "I'm sorry. She's probably very excited, she's just fucking weird. That's why she works at Buzzfeed. And I'm just... It's a lot."

"It sucks," Ryan says. "I kept having to pause my research to rewatch Paddington."

"Maybe I'll try that."

* * *

 

He doesn't try that. He goes home and seethes.

Teodora, whom he marries and builds a cottage for in town, never does believe in witches, and never looks at Shane twice, even when he slips up pretending to be human. She dies at sixty two, and Shane leaves the Commonwealth for a while. Wanders until he finds himself in Italy, where he spends ten days, from the start of the new century - Anno Domini at any rate - in the Gregorian Calendar to the start of the new century in the Julian one. He can't remember which calendar was in use when Gio died, but he quietly marks the anniversary, and wanders the Curia, trying to remember if it's the same one as the one where he watched Caesar die, hoping foolishly that it would save the Republic and punish him for the people of Alesia in one fell swoop. He visits St. Andrew's in the summer to avoid the heat, and hears about the plague that hit London while he was east. The Stuart line is dying out, and so is the fervent fear of witches that James had held, though the colonies just had some nastiness about witches. He follows stories of more plagues to the south as the weather turns, and marvels at Spain in the wake of devastation from a century of plagues. He goes north to follow the draw of war, stopping off at the new Academy. He finally reads _Sylva_ , and rereads _Don Quixote,_ technically twice, once in English, again in the original Spanish to wipe away the memory of the butchering of the masterpiece.

But the war still calls him north for the winter.

This is the problem with humans, he thinks, as he paces his apartment with Obi watching, eyes shining in the dark.

The wars spark new wars. The plagues die out, get cured, and come back because people refuse to vaccinate, because the ice is melting, because they allow people to live in abject poverty and breed illness like petri dishes. They get so scared of war of their own making, of oppressed classes gaining power, of different religions and cultures, that they start killing each other for made up reasons.

He paces and he thinks about the word justice. He'd been telling the truth when he told Ryan that he didn't like vigilante justice, in the Ken Rex McElroy episode. He doesn't trust people to do their homework. There are always witch-finders and insquisitors and posses and mobs. There are always people who will take their fear and turn it into violence against people who don't deserve it.

Just once, he'd like to see violence hit upon the deserving.

Bloody hands - headless bodies of killers slumped against the doors of prosecutors and detectives who never did their damned jobs - them too, torn to pieces, homes burned down, no, he'll leave the houses standing so there's no misunderstanding.

They wanted a monster and Shane will give them one because if everyone else is going to argue over the three boys who did escape with their lives, he's going to find the ones who never found justice for the three who didn't and he's going to find the ones who left them in that creek and he's going to rip them limb from limb and.

There's a knock at his door.

Shane stares at it.

Ryan is dripping anxiety on the other side.

He opens the door.

Ryan is carrying two six packs. Behind him TJ has a stack of pizzas in one hand and is scrolling on his phone in the other.

"Did I agree to host a party without noticing?" He asks.

"Sara says you need people time," Ryan says. "She says if I leave you to stew with no one but Obi you'll decide to disappear and live among feral cats and eschew human society."

"I'd bring her with me," he says in autopilot. "She'd help me name them."

But he does step back.

Ryan comes in, and TJ, and then Devon and Mark and Zack and Brent and several of their interns, El included. She's flushed, leaning a little on one of the production interns, and when he raises an eyebrow she says, "Pre-gaming."

"Pre-gaming?"

"I went to Penn State for undergrad," she explains. "But I'm not nineteen anymore so it was... A lot of wine. Brought you this."

He takes the bottle. It's mead, from some small winery he's never heard of.

"Ever had mead?"

"Yeah," he says, "a long time ago."

"S'good. Bees were very significant to a lot of cultures. Honey is a valuable natural resource. Also, beer sucks."

"Doesn't pair well with pizza, though," he says.

"Bet it'll be good with those honey hot wings," Ryan says, taking the bottle from Shane. Already he's gotten the beers to the fridge and set out boxes of food, and Mark and Brent are trying to figure out what input to use for streaming video service on his TV, and Devon is petting a wary Obi in the far corner, and TJ and Zack are wrangling interns into rearranging his furniture so they can all fit in the living room area, a cluster of dining chairs around the couch, desk chairs wheeled over, until the room is filled with human beings and the sound of some TV show starting from the very beginning.

"My bedtime is 11:30," Shane says.

"I'll clean up. Also, we got garlic knots."

"Mi casa es su casa."

So he lets the night stretch - TJ begs out early, citing a family, and Mark slips away quietly, Devon making polite excuses, but the interns are all unattached and Zack and Brent have nothing better to do that start a riotous game of Go Fish and a sports debate.

For reasons he can't fathom, Ryan doesn't involve himself in the debate or the card debacle, staying at Shane's side on the couch and starting the next episode of the show.

"The guy from Holes is you," Shane says, while Dulé Hill panics over a supposed ghost on screen.

"Yeah, well, the tall one is you."

"What tall one?"

"The detective."

"What!"

"He is! Gangly skeptic. History geek. Kind of an asshole. Old."

"If I were divorced and really liked guns and hated fun."

"Exactly."

Shane shakes his head, but he finds himself smiling.

"And the way he focused on that case," Ryan adds. "The one with the astronomer."

"I'm not the obsessive here," Shane says.

Ryan looks at him. "No more dead kid cases," he says softly. "Not ones like this, anyway."

"Thanks."

"Yeah, man."

The episode ends on a hopeful note, the loner detective unwrapping a fortune cookie with a smile.

Shane settles back. "Season two?" He asks, with a yawn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So far as I know, a woman named Fedia Voĭtekhovaia was never accused of witchcraft in the 17th century in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, nor did any tavern owner named Jonas Žemnya marry a woman named Teodora, widow of Gregorius. But there were witch trials at that time as a result of the ruling class (szlachta) being anxious about losing power to the peasant classes, especially since the Deluge was in full swing and the Cossack revolution had just happened.
> 
> At this time men had two names - a Christian first name and a traditional byname by which they were more commonly known. Women had a first name and a second name which usually denoted their relationship to a man, in Fedia/Teodora's case, "wife of Voitekh". Fedia and Teodora are alternate forms of the same name. Shane is still going by a form of John (like Shane, and Jack, as Giordano called him), this time Jonas, but his byname refers to a local goddess of fertility, again someone recognizing him as not human. 
> 
> GLOSSARY OF TERMS: 
> 
> chałupnik: member of peasant class; rented or occasionally owned a small cottage, occasionally with a small plot of land; often bound to serfdom 
> 
> komornik: member of peasant class, owning neither land nor dwelling; usually worked as a household servant for a nobleman (szlachta) or for a wealthier peasant
> 
> szlachta: aristocratic class with legal and social privilege; women of the szlachta could not be accused of witchcraft due to legal protections
> 
> Cossack: here refers to the Zaporizhian Sich, a group of former vassals who rebelled to form an autonomous state called the Cossack Hetmanate - during their rebellion they targeted Catholic and Jewish people and places of worship
> 
> arendator: a lease-holder, someone who collected rent from tenants while a landlord is away for a percentage fee; frequently these people were Jewish
> 
> Medovukha: similar to mead but faster and cheaper to make, a honey-based alcohol that would later be replaced by vodka, which was even cheaper and easier to make
> 
> royalist: refers to English Civil War, someone who sided with Charles I against Oliver Cromwell
> 
> Habsburgs: royal line who controlled the Holy Roman Empire for 300 years
> 
> And finally, the show they watch at the end is one I just discovered, called Psych! @bassiter on Tumblr recommended it to me. You may know him from the demon proof videos he makes for each episode of unsolved and I recommend you follow him if you're interested in Psych and have read his BYF! 
> 
> If you have any questions about the case or the history or just want to talk, I'm on Tumblr at @GenericGhouligan.

**Author's Note:**

> The case in question is the brutal murder of three young boys. Three teenagers were tried and convicted for the crime but released under strange circumstance after a great deal of evidence - or rather, a large lack of evidence - suggested their innocence. The predominant alternate theories all involve immediate family members of the boys. Everything about this case is awful.


End file.
